Saadoun Hammadi, 77; Baath Party leader was ally of Hussein

Saadoun Hammadi, a longtime ally of Saddam Hussein and one of the most senior Iraq Baath Party leaders -- who also was a rare Shiite prime minister under Hussein -- has died in a hospital in Germany, a Baath party spokesman and the party’s website said. He was 77.

Hammadi was released from a prison camp in Iraq in February 2004, after nine months in the custody of U.S. troops. He left Iraq for medical treatment in Jordan, Lebanon and Germany, then settled in Qatar in early 2005. He was believed to have had leukemia.

Hammadi died late Wednesday in a German hospital, party spokesman Hisham Odeh told the Associated Press. The Baath Party website reported his death Thursday. There were no other details.

Under Hussein, Hammadi held the posts of foreign and oil minister and was the last speaker of the Iraqi parliament up to the 2003 U.S. invasion. But he was not one of the 55 most-wanted Iraqis the Pentagon included in a pack of playing cards.

He joined the Baath Party in his Shiite hometown of Karbala, south of Baghdad, in the mid-1940s, climbing the party ladder steadily. He was oil minister and foreign minister before becoming prime minister in March 1991, after Hussein crushed a Shiite uprising following Iraq’s defeat in Kuwait. He was the parliament speaker from 1996 until the fall of Hussein’s regime.

A proponent of economic liberalization and reforms, Hammadi had a doctorate in economics from the University of Wisconsin in 1956.